Providing a Viewer Incentive With Video Content

ABSTRACT

Video content may be transmitted with enhanced content or ancillary information that includes viewer loyalty incentives. The viewer loyalty incentives may be in the form of incentives, certificates or other information which may accumulate depending on viewing time. The more the viewer watches, the more incentives the viewer may receive.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/291,300, filed on Nov. 8, 2011, which is a continuation of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 09/515,272, filed on Feb. 29, 2000, nowabandoned.

Background

This invention relates to communicating ancillary information associatedwith a plurality of audio/video programs, such as television contentassociated with a plurality of channels.

Ancillary information, such as program subtitles, emergency messages,closed caption messages and program guide information, may betransmitted with regular television content. Other types of ancillaryinformation that may be sent with television content includesenhancement data such as web pages, multimedia information or otherdigital data files. Ancillary information may be sent during thevertical blanking interval (VBI) of an analog television broadcastsignal. Alternatively, the ancillary information may be sent withdigital television content over a digital transport medium.

Various standards exist that provide for transmission of ancillaryinformation with television content. One standard is the AdvancedTelevision Enhancement Forum (ATVEF) Specification, Draft 1.1r.26, datedFeb. 2, 1999. The ATVEF Specification provides for transmission ofenhancement data along with television content in both analog anddigital systems, such as cable systems, satellite systems, terrestrialsystems, and so forth. The combination of enhancement data and thetelevision content may be referred to as enhanced television content.

Enhanced television content provides more information options toviewers. For example, a viewer may be presented with the option ofviewing advertisements, educational information and so forth whilewatching regular television programming.

With more competition, television providers are increasingly interestedin ways to increase viewer loyalty. Commonly, viewers may surf betweendifferent channels switching from program to program. Particularly,during the transmission of commercials, viewers may try other channelsor may leave temporarily. This decreases the effectiveness of thecommercials and therefore diminishes the desirability of the televisioncontent to advertisers. This ultimately means that, increasingly,broadcasting cost may ultimately be borne by the viewer in terms of payor pay-per-view television.

Thus, there is a need for better ways to increase the viewer loyalty ofviewers of video programming.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic depiction of a system for broadcasting televisioncontent together with viewer incentives;

FIG. 2 is a schematic depiction of a data packet for the system shown inFIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a schematic depiction of a plurality of data packets for asystem of the type shown in FIG. 1 that make up a given televisiontransmission;

FIG. 4 is a depiction of a display screen showing a graphical userinterface in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a depiction of a display screen showing another graphical userinterface in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a flow chart for software for implementing on embodiment ofthe present invention; and

FIG. 7 is a flow chart for software resident on the transmitter inaccording with one embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Referring to FIG. 1, an information delivery system 10 according to oneembodiment of the present invention includes a content creator ortransmitter 12, a transport system 14 and a plurality of receivers 16.The receivers 16 may be located in a variety of distributed sites. Thecontent creator or transmitter 12 originates enhancement data 15 (orother type of ancillary information) and television content 13 (or othertypes of content including audio and/or video data) to be transmitted bythe transport system 14.

Alternatively, the transmitter 12 may create enhancement data withtelevision content provided by another source to the system 14.Enhancement data may include graphics (e.g., web pages, multimediainformation or other digital data files), presentation layouts andsynchronization information. The combination of enhancement data andtelevision content is referred to as enhanced television content.

The transport operator system 14 provides an enhanced television contentdelivery infrastructure that may include terrestrial, cable, satelliteor other types of transmission facilities (either analog or digital).Enhanced television content may be transmitted over a transport mediumthat may be a terrestrial, cable, satellite or other type of link to thereceiver 16. The receiver 16 may be a television, set-top box, personalcomputer or other types of processor-based systems adapted to receivetelevision content and associated enhancement data.

As used in this description, the term audio/video (A/V) content isintended to include any type of audio and/or video data and may betransmitted and distributed to one or more receiving sites forpresentation to viewers and/or listeners. As used here, A/V content mayrefer to content that may include both an audio and a video portion orone or more audio or video portions. Further, ancillary informationother than enhancement data may be transmitted with the A/V content. Forexample, ancillary information may include program subtitles, emergencymessages, closed caption messages and program guide information.

Thus, the transport stream may contain audio, video and data such asancillary information, all tightly associated with a single transportstream program. Alternatively, the A/V content may be transmittedseparately from but in association with the ancillary information. Whenthe user tunes to the transport stream program, the receiving device candetermine the associated audio, video and data, for example because theyare all marked as being part of the same program.

One standard for describing transmission of enhancement data withtelevision content is the ATVEF Specification. The enhancement data maybe transmitted in a number of different ways from the transport operatorsystem 14 to the receiver 16, depending on the type of transport mediumutilized. For example, with an analog transport medium such as theNational Television System Committee (NTSC) Standard of the ElectronicsIndustries Association, portions of the enhancement data may be sent tothe vertical blanking interval (VBI) of the NTSC transmission. Adescription of NTSC may be found the book “Video Demystified: A Handbookfor the Digital Engineer” by Keith Jack, published High Text Publication(2d, Ed. 1996). Other types of transport media (analog or digital) mayprovide different mechanisms of communicating the enhancement data.

The enhancement data according to the ATVEF Specification may includeenhancements each having the following components: a ATVEF announcement,a resource and a trigger. The three components may be transmitted usingInternet protocol (IP) multicast to the receivers. An IP multicaststandard is described in Request for Comment (RFC 1301) entitled“Multicast Transport Protocol”. RFCs may be available at web siteaddress http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html.

Generally, an ATVEF announcement indicates an enhancement data is beingtransmitted and a resource includes one or more files that contain theenhancement data and a trigger synchronizes the enhancement data withthe TV transmission. An announcement may describe the location of boththe resource stream and the trigger stream. For each television channel,one or more enhancements may be offered as choices presented to theuser, who can select which of the enhancements, if any, to view. TheATVEF Specification uses a one-way transmission protocol (theUnidirectional Hypertext Transfer Protocol or UHTTP described in theATVEF Specification) to deliver resource data.

In one embodiment of the invention, the announcements, resources andtriggers associated with an A/V channel may be delivered at about thesame time as, and with the transmission of, the A/V content on thatchannel. Alternatively, ancillary data may be transmitted separately forsubsequent association with the A/V content. Conventionally, for eachenhancement, the resource stream may be delivered along with theannouncement, with the resource stream stored locally in the receiver16. If a viewer so desires, the enhancement data may be retrieved at thereceiver from local storage for viewing.

In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, theenhancement data stream includes not only conventional enhancement data,but also viewer loyalty incentives 17. The term “viewer loyaltyincentive” refers to any information which is transmitted to thereceiver to reward the viewer for continuously viewing a given program,commercial or series of programs. Generally, such incentives accumulateso that the more time the viewer continuously watches a giventransmission, the greater the viewer loyalty incentive.

The incentives may include coupons for discounted products, games,stickers, trading cards, video clips, pictures, music, audio material,and textual material as examples.

Referring next to FIG. 2, the transmitted packet information 20 mayinclude a header 22, data 24 and a incentive portion 26. The incentiveportion 26 may include the information making up all or part of anincentive. Thus, a plurality of such packets 20 may be necessary toaccumulate enough information to create the entire incentive. In suchcase, if the viewer only receives a number of packets less than theentire set, the viewer may not receive enough information to make auseful incentive.

As one example, an electronic coupon or collecting card may be provided,but unless the viewer receives a plurality of packets 20 only a portionof the overall award may be available. Thus, referring to FIG. 4, adisplay 28 may be provided in which the entire incentive, indicated at30, may be shown in dotted lines. However, if the viewer did not viewthe entire subject matter which is associated with the coupon orincentive, the viewer may receive only a portion of the overallincentive 30. In some embodiments of the present invention, that portionmay be useless. In such case, the viewer may be required to receive anumber of packets 20 sufficient to create the entire incentive.

Referring to FIG. 3, as a hypothetical example, the entire transmissionwhich must be viewed to receive the incentive, is indicated as series ofpackets 20 a through 20 h. Every other packet may include a portion 26of the overall incentive. When the viewer receives enough of thetransmission to collect all four incentive portions 26 a through 26 d,the viewer may then be able to access the entire coupon or incentive.

The viewer may be provided with software on the viewer's system whichenables the viewer to display the incentives earned so far. Thus, inthis example, the entire incentive may be indicated at 30 but a vieweronly having received a quarter of the necessary incentive portions 26may see a display of only a quarter of the overall incentive asindicated at 32.

In one embodiment of the present invention, electronic collecting cardsmay be progressively received by continuous loyalty to a given program,transmission or series of programs. The user may progressively receive anumber of electronic cards, each provided in the form of an imagedownload. These image downloads 34 may be collected into a display book28. Thus, the user may be treated to a graphical user interface displaywhich includes a series of pages 36 each including a number of tradingcards 34 which have been downloaded as incentives for viewer loyalty.

Referring to FIG. 6, the incentive software 39 may be associated withthe receiver 16 and a incentive storage 18. The incentive storage 18 mayinclude the software or script which may be downloaded from thetransmitter to the receiver and may further include stored informationparsed from the transport 14 and associated with the coupon or incentivefeature.

Initially, the receiver 16 software 39 determines whether a channel hasbeen requested as indicated at 40. If so, the system tunes to thatparticular channel and the multiplexed data is received from thetransmitter. The system parses the enhanced content from the televisioncontent if the enhanced content and television content are transmittedtogether, as indicated in block 42. Thereafter, within the enhancedcontent, the coupon or incentive data may be further parsed as indicatedin block 44.

In order to prevent a user from simply leaving the television tuned to aparticular program, the viewer may be asked to respond to an inquiry.For example, the viewer may be asked to provide an input in response toa question on the screen as indicated in block 46. If the viewer failsto respond, the flow cycles back to the beginning without storing theincentive data that has been received. If this feature is not desired(as determined at diamond 45) it may be bypassed.

Conversely, if the viewer responds to the inquiry, the incentive datamay then be stored and is effectively earned by the viewer. Thereafter,the viewer may make an inquiry for status information as indicated indiamond 52. In such case, as indicated in 54, the viewer may be providedwith the display of the type shown in FIG. 4. Absent an inquiry for sucha display, the flow may recycle back to the beginning.

In addition, the viewer may request the overall status of all theincentives that have been received as indicated in diamond 56. In suchcase, the user may receive a display of the collection of incentives theviewer has received as indicated in block 58. For example, a incentivebook or a collection of trading cards may be displayed in a graphicaluser interface which operates like a book. The user may turn from pageto page by clicking on an appropriate icon as indicated at 60 and 62 sothat the viewer may page, page by page, through the incentive book.

In one embodiment of the present invention, all of the availableincentives may be initially displayed in a faint form. When the viewerreceives the particular incentive, it may then be highlighted in a fullcolor detailed display. Thus, the viewer can determine which incentiveshave not yet been earned and may seek to obtain them by viewing theappropriate content.

In still another embodiment of the present invention, incentiveinformation may be in the form of a key. When sufficient information isprovided to activate the key, the key may be utilized as a credit tomake on-line purchase selections. The keys may be utilized either fordiscounts or to receive free products. These products may be actualproducts that may be sent to the viewer or may be in the form ofelectronic downloads of information.

Referring to FIG. 7, the incentive distribution software 70 begins byreceiving video content, as indicated in block 72, from a contentprovider. Ancillary information including the viewer loyalty incentiveis also received as indicated in block 74. The video content and theancillary information is then transmitted either in combination or atseparate times as indicated in block 76. The viewer loyalty incentivesmay be transmitted progressively so that as viewers continue to watchprograms, they receive more incentives.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the control of storage ofthe incentives is on the receiving unit, the same control may beprovided from the transmitter. That is, the transmitter may, for examplethrough a back channel, receive information about the viewer'sinattentiveness. If the viewer is no longer actually present, thetransmitter may stop transmitting the viewer incentives in accordancewith one embodiment of the present invention.

While the present invention has been described with respect to a limitednumber of embodiments, those skilled in the art will appreciate numerousmodifications and variations therefrom. It is intended that the appendedclaims cover all such modifications and variations as fall within thetrue spirit and scope of this present invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: displaying a plurality oftelevision segments available for viewing by a user; associating witheach of said plurality of television segments a distinct viewingincentive that may be earned by viewing each of said segmentsautomatically; using a computer processor to visually indicate an awardthat may be earned by viewing each of said segments and earning saiddistinct incentives for viewing each of said segments; determiningwhether the user has viewed one of said segments; if said user hasviewed one of said segments, displaying an indication that an incentiveassociated with said segment was earned and displaying additionalincentives that must be earned to obtain an award; determining whetherthe user qualifies for the award by viewing each of said segments andearning each incentive; and if said user qualifies for said award,providing for a download that signifies that the award is available tothe user.
 2. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying said segmentsincludes displaying commercials.
 3. The method of claim 1 includingtransmitting video programming together with ancillary information andtransmitting said visual indication of an award as part of saidancillary information.
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying anindication that an incentive was earned includes progressively providinga portion of the award.
 5. The method of claim 4 including showing theportion of the award which has not yet been earned.
 6. The method ofclaim 1 further including progressively providing incentives which maybe collected in a graphical user interface for display.
 7. The method ofclaim 6 including progressively adding incentives to a graphical userinterface which may be viewed in a virtual book of pages of incentives.8. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructionsexecutable on a processor-based system to: display a plurality oftelevision segments available for viewing by a user; associate with eachof said plurality of television segments a distinct viewing incentivethat may be earned by viewing each of said segments automatically;visually indicate an award that may be earned by viewing each of saidsegments and earning said distinct incentives for viewing each of saidsegments; determine whether the user has viewed one of said segments; ifsaid user has viewed one of said segments, display an indication that anincentive associated with said segment was earned and displayingadditional incentives that must be earned to obtain an award; determinewhether the user qualifies for the award by viewing each of saidsegments and earning each incentive; and if said user qualifies for saidaward, provide for a download that signifies that the award is availableto the user.
 9. The medium of claim 8 further storing instructions todisplay commercials.
 10. The medium of claim 8 further storinginstructions to transmit video programming together with ancillaryinformation and transmitting said visual indication of an award as partof said ancillary information.
 11. The medium of claim 8 further storinginstructions to progressively provide a portion of the award.
 12. Themedium of claim 11 further storing instructions to show the portion ofthe award which has not yet been earned.
 13. The medium of claim 8further storing instructions to progressively provide incentives whichmay be collected in a graphical user interface for display.
 14. Themedium of claim 13 further storing instructions to progressively addincentives to a graphical user interface which may be viewed in avirtual book of pages of incentives.
 15. An apparatus comprising aprocessor to: display a plurality of television segments available forviewing by a user; associate with each of said plurality of televisionsegments a distinct viewing incentive that may be earned by viewing eachof said segments automatically; visually indicate an award that may beearned by viewing each of said segments and earning said distinctincentives for viewing each of said segments; determine whether the userhas viewed one of said segments; if said user has viewed one of saidsegments, display an indication that an incentive associated with saidsegment was earned and displaying additional incentives that must beearned to obtain an award; determine whether the user qualifies for theaward by viewing each of said segments and earning each incentive; andif said user qualifies for said award, provide for a download thatsignifies that the award is available to the user; and a memory coupledto said processor.
 16. The apparatus of claim 15, said processor todisplay commercials.
 17. The apparatus of claim 15, said processor totransmit video programming together with ancillary information andtransmitting said visual indication of an award as part of saidancillary information.
 18. The apparatus of claim 15, said processorfurther storing instructions to progressively provide a portion of theaward.